Romana Fixes It All
by Zelda1
Summary: The Doctor takes Rose n' Adam to the year 200,000. The newest chapter in my ficlet series adding Romana to New Who. She survived the Time War but can she survive travelling with the Doctor? Eventual DoctorRose pairing.
1. I, 1: Rose

Romana Fixes It All

a Doctor Who fanfiction by zelda

Disclaimer: _Doctor Who_ and its accoutrements are the property of the BBC. I just like to play in their sandbox, and do solemnly swear to put everything neatly away when I am finished. Eventual Nine/Rose (just like the series)

_1. Rose_

"Goin' to blow up some Autons," said the Doctor, poking his head into the garden, where Romana was diligently, if mostly unsuccessfully, trying to keep the Patagonian snodgrass from choking off the Argosian sunflowers.

"Mmm-hmm," she answered, wondering if the snodgrass roots might actually be made out of double-reinforced titanium.

"Might not come back," the Doctor stated nonchalantly. "But in case I do, don't muck about with the console."

Romana sat back on her heels, ready to give the Doctor a piece of her mind about the state of said console, when she processed what he had said prior to vanishing through the archway.

"For Rassilon's sake," she exclaimed, dropping her garden spade and hurrying after the Doctor. 

* * *

"What're you doin' up here?" the Doctor hissed, causing Romana to jump with surprise and drop the sweater she'd been holding. 

"I'm shopping."

"Th'Autons are down in the basement."

"And ladies' wear is on the fifth floor."

"What'd'you need that for?"

Romana pursed her lips and Looked at the Doctor.

The tips of his ears turned red.

"Fine, fine. I'll go lay the charges."

"Why? Is the transmitter here?"

"The … oh, bugger. Still, better to get the ones that're here than let them run around loose."

"Fine."

"Uh…"

"Yes?"

"Don't suppose you could, er…"

"Yes?"

"Whip me up a batch of anti-plastic? Got a feelin' I might be needin' it."

"Fine."

"Fantastic!" 

* * *

Much later the Doctor poked his head into Romana's room and said, "Busy?" 

Romana looked over her shoulder from her seat at the desk. "What do you think?"

The Doctor was already coming in, lowering himself to her bed and bouncing gently. "Nice work," he said approvingly to the ceiling.

The bed began to squeak slightly as he continued to bounce.

After a few minutes, Romana put down her drawing pencil and asked, "Doctor?"

"So, Autons and Nestene Consciousness taken care of. Thanks for the anti-plastic, by the way," he added. "Y'might say it hit the spot."

Romana inclined her head to indicate that it was not a problem and took up the pencil again. The squeaking continued.

"And there was this girl—"

The pencil went down.

"Worked in a shop – the shop we blew up, actually – and she was fantastic, Romana, she really was."

Romana would have like to deny all complicity in the blowing up of any shops, but the squeaking had finally stopped and that seemed to indicate that the Doctor had a problem, which created a bigger problem for her because she did have quite a bit of work she wanted to get done.

"And?" she said, turning in her chair to face him.

"Well, I asked her to come along, didn't I? Only she said no." He let out a slightly offended breath. "Must've been a bit dodgy, big-eared old bloke like me asking a young thing like her to travel through all of space and time – and why didn't you tell me about the ears? A fellow likes to know a thing like that, before he goes out in public askin' people stuff."

"You didn't want to know," Romana replied, coming to sit down beside him. She thought wistfully of her precious peace and quiet, took a good look at the Doctor out of the corner of her eye, then said, "Ask her again."

"You think I should ask again?"

"Yes."

"I never ask twice."

"What _is_ the point of regenerating if you insist on making the same mistakes over and over again?" said Romana sharply to the air in front of her.

The Doctor turned his hands over and examined his palms for a moment.

"Y'know what, Romana? I should ask her again."

"Yes."

"Alright, I'll do it."

"Good. Now, if you don't mind, get out of my room, Doctor. I've got things to do."


	2. I, 2: The End of the World

2. The End of the World 

"Goin' to take Rose to the end of the Earth," said the Doctor, poking his head into the study, where Romana was deeply engrossed in a volume the Doctor didn't recognize.

"Mmm," she acknowledged, without looking up.

* * *

Some time later Romana closed her book and realized the TARDIS was exceptionally quiet.

After a while the silence became dull, and she stepped out of the TARDIS to explore.

Having no identification, she was promptly arrested.

When she decided she'd had enough of the stockade, she soniced her way out and went in search of the Doctor.

She found him deep in the bowels of Platform One, about to reboot the station with the assistance of a Tree from Cheem.

"But you're wood!"

"Then stop wasting time, Time Lord."

Romana sighed with mild exasperation and assessed the situation. She could see the reboot control at the far end of a walkway. A walkway which, in an idiotic feat of engineering, was blocked by three fans, doubtless part of the station's cooling system. Still, the truly idiotic feat of engineering lay in the fact that as the station was currently overheating due to the failure of the computer system, those same fans were moving faster and faster, making it nearly impossible to access the reboot switch.

But, realized Romana, two turns back there had been a maintenance supply area, equipped, she recollected, with a low-riding wheeled trolley. She spent one more moment verifying her estimation of relative heights and widths, then dashed back down the hall.

* * *

A moment later, the Doctor was counting the revolutions of the first fan.

"Get out of the way, Doctor!"

The crack of command in Romana's voice moved the Doctor's feet without interference from his massive Time Lord brain. Something hurtled by at foot level, sliding wham-wham-wham beneath the three deadly fan blades. There was a light crash at the far end of the catwalk and the fans stopped moving, revealing Romana in the distance.

She was back at the Doctor's side in a moment. "Hello," she said to the Tree, "I'm Romana. Pleased to meet you. I'll thank you not to scan me, please, it's very intrusive. Doctor, where is your human?"

"Rose!" gasped the Doctor, and took off.

Romana returned to the TARDIS.

"Most satisfactory," she reflected.


	3. I, 3: The Unquiet Dead

_3. The Unquiet Dead_

"Goin' to take Rose into Cardiff," said the Doctor, poking his head into the kitchen where Romana sat enjoying a cup of tea.

"Cardiff? What's in Cardiff?" asked Romana curiously.

"Everyone's a critic," huffed the Doctor, and departed.

Romana took the opportunity to familiarize herself with the newest modifications the Doctor had made to the TARDIS control console. That's when she noticed the readings.

After a hurried search through the wardrobe room, a well-cloaked figure made its way out of the anachronistic Police Box and across town to the mortuary.

* * *

Romana rapped on the door and then pulled the bell rope once again, sonic screwdriver at the ready. She finally made out a figure coming down the hall, and at long last the door opened.

"Is the Doctor here?"

"I say, young woman, who are you?"

"Is the Doctor here?"

"Well, yes, but—"

"I need to speak to him."

The human blustered a few more moments, then pattered back down the hall, where Romana could just make out the dark-coated shape of the Doctor.

"No, it's alright, Charles, I'll take care of it," he said. "You go back in with the ladies and Mr. Sneed."

A few long strides put the Doctor in front of Romana.

"What d'you want?"

"There's a rift here, did you know?"

The Doctor crossed his arms and leaned against the door frame. "If you wanted to come, all you had to do was say so."

"If I had wanted, I would have. Did you know there's a rift here?"

"Yeah." He paused. "Just had a nice chat with what's on the other side, too."

"And?" said Romana, when no more information was forthcoming.

The Doctor took a long look down his nose at her. "They're called the Gelth."

"The Gelth, the Gelth," muttered Romana, trying to recall when she had heard the name.

"Made homeless by the War. There's just a few, lookin' for someplace to call home."

"The Gelth!"

"Yeah, that's what they're called."

"Just a few?"

"Yeah."

Romana shook her head.

"Not just a few?"

"No. Sorry. The last census we had put their population at, oh, 1.6 million or so?"

"That a fact?"

"Well, they probably suffered some losses in the war. Non-corporeal, I expect?"

"Yeah."

"Not for long if they get through."

"1.6 million, eh?"

"Give or take."

"Well, it's been lovely chattin', must do it again some time, gotta blow up the house now. Thanks for stoppin' by, Romana. See you back at the TARDIS," said the Doctor, all in one breath, and closed the door in her face.

"Hmph," said Romana.

The door opened back up. "Mind you, I'm still not convinced I wasn't better off thinkin' you were a figment of my delusional though obviously magnificent mind." The Doctor shut the door a second time.

Romana went back to the TARDIS, where she promptly realigned a most illogical set of switches on the console.

"Figment that, Doctor."


	4. I, 45: Aliens in London & WWIII

_4. Aliens in London and 5. World War III_

"Goin' to take Rose to visit her mum," said the Doctor, poking his head into the small gymnasium, where Romana was twisting her way into a complicated form of Thranduilian yoga.

By the time Romana carefully untangled her left leg from her right arm and lowered the arm back to the ground, the Doctor's head had already vanished around the corner, leaving only the sound of his voice. "Probably be here a while, could do some shoppin'."

She was deep in the Underground when the ship went screaming overhead, but the news of the alien arrival spread within minutes, even in the subway. When the train pulled into the station, Romana shuffled along with the rest of the masses to the nearest televisions, all of them braying the report that the Prime Minister was nowhere to be found.

"Hmm," said Romana.

* * *

The panicked crowds of humans delayed Romana's return to the TARDIS by a considerable amount. The alley where the TARDIS had been parked was dark and empty. Instead of the TARDIS Romana found only a young man, flat on his back, who picked himself up and slunk away before she could question him. Romana pursed her lips and considered her options: loiter in the darkness until the Doctor deigned to return or … 

Very shortly Romana was ensconced in a café with her cold hands wrapped around a steaming hot drink, while the alien drama continued to unfold on the television screen in the corner.

"And here," said the news announcer, "we have … who do we have, Alistair?"

Romana, glancing at the screen, spat out most of her first sip.

"Apparently two more experts are joining those already in Downing Street, the unidentified man giving a jaunty wave to the media. I must say, Petroc, he seems very confident the situation will soon be resolved."

"Indeed, Alistair, so do we all. So do we all."

The door to the café was already swinging closed as the waitress returned to the table with the bill.

* * *

Some time later, a thoroughly irritated Romana finally got off the bus several blocks away from 10 Downing Street, and began the slow process of infiltrating the heavily guarded official residence of England's Prime Minister. 

"See the sights," she grumbled to herself, pulling out her sonic screwdriver and aiming it at the lock on the service entrance door of Number Ten. The door popped open and Romana snuck inside.

"'Do some shoppin','" she muttered, ducking back through a doorway just as the guard who had been about to patrol down her corridor was stopped by a fat man in uniform.

"Ah, Sergeant," the fat man instructed, "now that the Doctor's been neutralized, the upper levels are out of bounds – to everyone."

The Sergeant began to protest as Romana slipped away to find a less open staircase.

* * *

Once on the upper floor, Romana paused in the hallway and took a tentative breath of the fetid air. What _was_ that smell? The alcove to her left, full of neatly hung pale peach _things_, seemed a likely culprit, but a cautious sniff in that direction proved her hypothesis false. A closer examination of the things on the hangers revealed that they were suits, made of carefully preserved human skin with a dimensional zipper on each forehead. 

Romana pulled her sonic screwdriver from her pocket and gave it an appraising look.

Twenty minutes later, two Slitheen exited the family meeting, preparing to go before the nations of the world and beg for Britain's nuclear codes. There was only one problem.

"I can't get my zipper done!" exclaimed the one masquerading as the acting Prime Minister.

"What?" said the other. "Perhaps you're pulling it wrong. Let me get mine, then I'll–" There was a muttered curse.

"What?" said the first.

"Mine's broken too."

The two aliens, half-in, half-out of their human disguises, exchanged a worried look.

Down the hall, near the top of the stairs, Romana recrossed her arms, impatiently tapping her foot. "Hello!" she called at last, waggling her sonic screwdriver at them.

With a wordless roar, the Slitheen took after her.

Romana smiled as she led them down the main staircase. The guards, stunned with shock, let her slip through. The Slitheen were not so fortunate.

* * *

"Listen to this," came Mickey's voice over the speaker phone. 

"In a shocking development, unconfirmed reports from Downing Street suggest that aliens are present within the residence itself. We go now to just outside Number Ten."

"You can hear the sounds of a battle even from the street – cries of anguished creatures, gunfire–"

The Doctor slammed the mute button, strode to the door of the cabinet room, and opened the steel blast doors. The anteroom was deserted, but the tinny noises that had been coming through the speakers were suddenly much, much louder. And much more real. The Doctor listened for a moment, then turned back to Rose and Harriet Jones.

"History on the make," he said. "I've got things to do, but you two'll be safe in here."

Rose stepped forward. "'M not leavin' you," she said, taking his hand.

"Harriet?"

"As the only elected representative in the room, I believe I owe it to my constituents to see what's going on," she said, swallowing.

"Y'don't have to go," the Doctor said gently.

"No, I really think I do," she answered, with more resolve.

"Then let's go," he said with a grin.

_Back on the TARDIS_

"I had things under control," rebuked the Doctor.

"Mmm," Romana answered, rather unsatisfactorily from the Doctor's point of view.

"You don't have to go round tryin' to fix things," he stated.

The look Romana leveled at him argued otherwise.

"I'm tellin' you now, Romana. Stop interferin'. I know what I'm doin'."

There was no answer, just a continued even stare.

The Doctor stared back.

Romana crossed her eyes, then stuck out her tongue and made the most horrible face the Doctor had ever seen. On a currently living Time Lord, that was.

"Fine," he said, swallowing his laughter. "Thank you. Don't do it again. Now bugger off and leave an old man in peace."

"Goodnight, Doctor."

"Goodnight, Romana."


	5. I, 6: Dalek

The day started in the usual way. "Checkin' out a distress signal," the Doctor had said, poking his head around the corner into the room Romana was currently occupying.

Unfortunately he had failed to notice it was the bath.

_Several minutes later_

"Fine!"

"Fine!"

A door slammed and feet stomped off into the distance.

_Several hours later_

"You were right. It was a Dalek."

Romana simply raised an eyebrow, conveying the entire contents of the multi-volume _Encyclopedia I-Told-You-So-ica_ in one glance. The Doctor didn't even have the grace to blush.

"At least it was the last."

Romana's eyebrow crept higher.


	6. I, 7: The Long Game

7. The Long Game

"Takin' Rose n' Adam to the year 200,000," said the Doctor, poking his head into the TARDIS's wardrobe room.

"Pardon?" came Romana's voice from the far distance.

"I said," said the Doctor, raising his voice, "I'm takin' Rose n' Adam to the year 200,000."

"Pardon?"

"I SAID, I'M TAKIN' ROSE N' ADAM TO THE YEAR 200,000!" shouted the Doctor.

"Good heavens, Doctor, there's no need to shout," said Romana, popping out of the clothes rack next to him, a pair of red shoes in her hand.

"But I – you –" stammered the Doctor, looking from Romana beside him to the far reaches of the wardrobe room and back again.

Romana returned his look, with, the Doctor was to recollect later, the hint of a smirk in the corners of her mouth.

"Never mind," said the Doctor, and left.

Romana's smirk bloomed into a smile. "Good job, old girl," she said, running an appreciative hand down an exposed beam. "Now that he's out of the way, let's have a look at those relays, shall we?"

* * *

_Thirty-eight minutes and twenty-six seconds later_

Romana exited the TARDIS with a neatly categorized shopping list of parts in her left hand. True, she wasn't entirely sure whether she needed everything on this list, but the diagnostics she had run on the TARDIS strongly suggested that several major systems were on the verge of failure if preventive maintenance wasn't undertaken immediately.

She soniced open a nearby computer access panel and proceeded to remove the data relay.

A few hours later, lengths of refined ultonium-copper wire and a miscellany of other parts were stashed into the dimensionally transcendent box so kindly supplied by the TARDIS. Romana had also discovered that the station was inhabited by a giant space slug, but had decided to let the Doctor handle things on his own, just this once. She was just pulling the last crystal matrix unit from a set in a service corridor when she felt the very faint vibration of an explosion, many floors overhead. In fact, she'd guess it was, oh, three hundred and sixty-eight floors overhead, to be precise.

Time to get back to the TARDIS.

* * *

_Seventeen hours, forty-two minutes and twelve seconds later_

Later that night, the Doctor wandered the corridors of the TARDIS. It wasn't that it wasn't something that he often did, because it was, so there was certainly nothing unusual in it. And there was nothing unusual about checking out the status of the various rooms he came across in his travels. And he certainly wasn't looking for Romana, because there really was nothing he wanted to tell her about the events on Satellite Five. Such as, for instance, how absolutely fantastic Cathica had been. Or how Rose had asked exactly the right questions. Or how very, very, very, very stupid Adam had been. No, the Doctor reflected, he had nothing to say to Romana at all.

A door reappeared as the Doctor walked on, and inside the workroom Romana continued to solder parts together. She turned a relay over, wondering if it could be connected to the damper field procrastinator she had already constructed. Yes, if she linked this node to that module ... she could either fry an egg or modulate large energy fields, her choice. She shook her head, picking up the sonic screwdriver and another part, singing softly under her breath …

_"Who's afraid of the big bad wolf?"_


End file.
